Bill Gates: "I was pretty naive"

Just before Christmas, the Seattle Times provided coverage of the Gates Foundation's report about their decade's worth of progress with their goal of fixing the world (the Grand Challenge). After a billion dollars spent on improving lives and health care in the developing world, Gates had to report, "I was pretty naive about how long the process would take."

In his quest to make the world a better place, Gates invested in all sorts of research. But it turns out that research can only happen as fast as it can happen. Sometimes science takes time.

Not only did he underestimate some of the scientific hurdles, Gates said. He and his team also failed to adequately consider what it would take to implement new technologies in countries where millions of people lack access to basic necessities such as clean water and medical care.

The foundation has tweaked the Grand Challenges approach in a variety of ways, but still doesn't really know whether any of it is actually succeeding. In many cases, they know it is not. There are several examples, but let's look at toilets.

Gates funded high-tech toilets in the Indian city of Raichur, at a cost of $8,000 each. These beauties have automatic sensors that run lights, fans and FM radio when a patron uses them. Some prototypes in the toilets project wing of Grand Challenges also throw in solar power and other amenities. But in Raichur, the rollout had some technical difficulties, and then- the public just didn't use them.

As it turns out, there are already people working on the toilet problem, but not with high tech answers. Jason Kass, founder of Toilets for People (which, as a name-- really? to distinguish them from Toilets for Cattle?) took Gates to task in a New York Times piece "Bill Gates Can't Build a Toilet" in which he notes, “If the many failed development projects of the past 60 years have taught us anything, it’s that complicated, imported solutions do not work."

But Gates is a technocrat with a deep commitment to techno-solutions to problems, like a plan to stop Dengue Fever by injecting bio-engineering mosquitoes to with bacteria that block disease transmission, instead of more directly addressing the living conditions and general health of the affected regions.

Drawing a line between Gates's naivete about fixing world health problems and his naivete about education systems is like shooting fish in a barrel, but some fish just need to be shot.

My impression of Gates is not a power-hungry greed-hound who is somehow trying to leverage the world's suffering into personal gain, but someone who is blinded to any view of the world but his own. He's used to being the smartest guy in the room, the boss, the man. It would be understandable if he had succumbed to a belief that he's fundamentally better, wiser, cleverer than most other people. He is a computer engineering systems guy. Systems are his hammer and everything in the world is a nail.

With much of his health initiative, you see the same basic outline-- technology will allows us to set up this awesome system, and because it is so obviously the Right Way To Do Things, people will just fall in line, and if they won't we'll just have to find a way to get them to. It's the same pattern some techno-critics see in many Microsoft failed products-- this is how people ought to want to do things, so this should work (and if it doesn't, it's the people, not our product). How any of you got a Zune for Christmas?

Gates wants to use systems to change society, but his understanding of how humans and culture and society and communities change is faulty. It's not surprising that Gates is naive-- it's surprising that he is always naive in the same way. It always boils down to "I really thought people would behave differently." And although I've rarely seen him acknowledge it print, it also boils down to, "There were plenty of people who could have told me better, but I didn't listen to them."

The non-success of Grand Challenges is just like the failure of the Gates Common Core initiative. Gates did not take the time to do his homework about the pre-existing structures and systems. He did not value the expertise of people already working in the field, and so he did not consult it or listen to it. He put an unwarranted faith in his created systems, and imagined that they would prevail because everyone on the ground would be easily assimilated into the new imposed-from-outside system. He became frustrated by peoples' insistence on seeing things through their own point-of-view rather than his. And he spent a huge amount of money attempting to impose his vision on everybody else.

We can say, "He's a rich guy. He can spend his money on what he wants," and that's true. But the opportunity cost here is staggering. Imagine what could be done if we started with, "Here's a billion dollars. Let's get the experts together and decide how it could best be spent." Instead of "Here's a billion dollars that we're going to spend on my solution no matter what."

I keep wondering when the light bulb is going to go off. After the failure of his small schools initiative, Gates had the chance to say either "This small schools things didn't work" or "My whole approach to finding solutions for education is messed up," and he seems to have chosen the former. It's nice that he can occasionally look back and call himself naive. It would be nicer if he could look around and recognize when he's doing it again, right now. It would be best if he could really recognize what he's being naive about.

Human Cogs

I'm sitting in the terminal at the Pittsburgh Airport, which this morning isn't terribly crowded. I'm a fretful, infrequent traveler, so when none of the disasters I allow time for actually happen, I end up with terminal time on my hands.

Flying always reminds me of how dehumanizing systems can be. An airport is a place filled with customers who are at times actually treated like barely tolerable nuisances. There is a system at work here, and the expectation is that humans will line up and be proper cogs.

People deal with that in many ways. Those required to enforce the system can put a human face on it, or show their annoyance with the cogs that won't behave or simply aren't familiar with their coggy roles. Not knowing what you're supposed to do is one of the great unpardonable.

Pittsburgh has, in my experience, one of the nicer groups of TSA agents. But then, I'm a reasonably uninteresting looking middle aged white guy. Most of the people I encounter in an airport, from airline workers to food sellers, treat me reasonably well. Plus, as a teacher, I'm pretty good at adapting to the rhythm of a place built on rules. I can see that brown and black guys, particularly middle-easterny looking brown guys, don't always get the same kind treatment, and it's fascinating to me that systems supposedly built on treating people like identical cogs can very easily incorporate systemic nuances and tricks for treating cogs very differently.

I can also see the effects on the cogs. While some people can adapt a friendly open approach, or strike up a connection with a travel buddy, mostly traveling seems to foster the same warmth and community as a busy Manhattan sidewalk. People are tense anyway, particularly those who don't travel often, and air travel fosters an atmosphere of scarcity. I've taken to traveling with a checked bag and only my personal backpack to carry on, because not having to compete for overhead bin space reduces my boarding stress by 1000%. There's not enough space, enough time, enough kindness, enough slack to go around, and contrary to some free-market fans, the competition does not bring out the best in people.

I have had many pleasant travel experiences, and I read that great piece about coming together at an airport terminal (I would link to it, but I'm on a tablet right now and it's just not going to happen), and I completely believe it. There are certain moments when. People insist on asserting their humanity in the face of the machine, and you can't assert your humanity without recognizing the humanity of the people around you.

I have no complaints, sitting here. This kind of travel reminds me how many of my "problems" are first world problems. I'm fortunate that I have a demeanor, background, and skin color that make these sorts of adventures pretty free and easy.

But airport terminals always remind me what a fine line separates an institutional system that supports and serves people from one that grinds them down and beats them up. It is such a little thing--a kind word, a recognition of shared humanity, a piece of public art, a valuing of the needs of humans over the "needs" of the system.

I think about all of this in particular because I'm headed to Seattle to meet my first grandson who is only about seventeen days old and not very interested in the deeper philosophical underpinnings of human systems, but will one day have to deal with whatever we have built for his generation.

Going into Gates Territory

Over in Seattle center you'll find fun things like the famous space needle, the EMP (a sort of SF museum housed in a 1950s vision of what 1990 would look like), and across the street from the EMP, an unassuming little building that houses the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Visitors Center. I sometimes tell you that I've read or watched something so you don't have to. Well, this time, I visited a place so that you don't have to.

Out front the sidewalk has some sculptures of books, vaccines and other good things, with quick data points on the big windows.

The center is free, and there's a front desk and pleasant welcome lady right there once you enter.

Then there's an entire room that's pretty much devoted to faces.

This face motif runs through the entire rest of the center. The entire space is open and clean, separated more into different sections than actual rooms. Each section has a family of displays, like this one

There's even a piece of display addressing the question of disagreement with the foundation's work, though it doesn't specifically name their education initiatives

One display focuses on education and vaccination. It includes one of several panels that can be toggled back and forth between two different talking heads.

 In this case, we have a choice between Melinda Gates on vaccinations or this guy on education (specifically, teacher effectiveness).

There were several panels that rotated quotes. I snapped shots of several of the education quotes.

 

Are students happy? Are they getting something of value? That's a really interesting pair of questions to answer, both relying on hugely subjective judgments. Happy by whose standards? Value as assigned by whom?

 

Well, that was back in 2012. I don't think charter operators ever got the memo.

 

Yes, projector Bill Gates is still saying this, even though real Bill Gates has since dropped the idea.

 

As is often the case, the key here is some form of standardization of students.

 

Interesting word here-- "assigned." Some Higher Authority just needs to put teachers where they should be (and the Higher Authority knows where that would be).

 

There are also several displays dedicated to getting drinkable water for folks all over the world, and some interactive displays for all ages. One offers folks a chance to offer their ideas about improving education. I admit that it was pure snark that led me to photograph this one, which was not working when we were there.

 

The place in its entirety can be toured pretty quickly. It's modestly sized, not glitzy, and a little bit retro in style. It's hard to gauge whether it's the product of someone close to the Gates or a group of summer interns.

So, no, the visitors' center did not look like Darth Vader's lair or an evil mind-control facility. And I'm sure I could slam it for being a self-aggrandizing ego shrine, but if it didn't exist, I could slam the foundation for their secrecy or lack of transparency. So let's stipulate that if you hate the Gates Foundation, it's easy to spin the center to prove how awful they are, and move on.

It didn't particularly change my perception of Gates, which has never been that he is some sort of evil nefarious genius. When I read his writing and watch videos of him, I'm always left with two impressions:

1) This is a man who has been completely in charge of a large operation for basically his entire adult life. He literally has no idea how things work in a setting which people him aren't automatically going to follow his instructions. And he's pretty sure that people do as he says because he's right. I get no sense of a man who pays people to agree with him-- he pays people to get things done, and he knows what things need to be done. I think he's ruthless, but I don't think he's power hungry for the same reason that I am rarely food-hungry-- he has always had power, and when things interfere with it, it's like when you or I get a sleeve snagged on the corner of a desk. Just yank it free and move on.

It's instructive to look at his first run-in with DC (over the Microsoft monopoly issue). He's not outraged that he's being questioned. He's more puzzled-- I'm right, so why can't you guys see that I'm right? He's learned a lot since then about how to smooth his path, but he's not trying to take over the world-- he's just trying to get the world to see that he's right about what the world should do.

The critical thing about people like this (and Gates is not the only one who exists) is that they do not believe they are being selfish. They are trying to help. They are trying to Make Things Right. Can they help it if they happen to have a vision of how to do that? You can see it in his flummoxed reaction to Lindsey Layton's interview question. Gates is just different from other People of Vision in that he has always possessed the resources to pursue his vision and people who are disinclined to tell him his vision is faulty.

The visitors center reflects all of that. It really isn't about how great Melinda and Bill are, but how great their vision for Making the World Right is.

2) Gates is a systems guy. I've written about this before, but here's the basic idea. Systems guys like nice neat systems, and they will give you one that works properly just as soon as they get all the parts lined up and in their places.

Hence the quest for scalable standardized solutions. If everybody would just act the right way, the system would work. If we could find a way to remove all the individual variation, the system should run smoothly. If every cog in the machine is properly manufactured and installed, the machine should hum along and do just what it needs to do.

The old education was so messy, had so many non-standardized parts. That sort of thing bothers systems guys just like a persistently out-of-tune singer makes a perfect-pitch musician nuts. It's like riding in a car while your grandmother drives. Good lord in heaven, if you would just let me fix this thing right here!!!

Again, it's not "I want this so I'm going to get it." It's "Can't you see how wrong this is??"

Now, I think these two aspects of Gates make him blind to many things, including the motives of some of the people who have hopped on his school reform gravy train. And those blind spots are potentially highly corrosive to someone's moral center. They also make someone more potentially destructive than an authentically evil person, because someone who's on a Righteous Crusade neither listens to nor stops for anyone who disagrees with them, and they're usually plenty comfortable with all manner of collateral damage in pursuit of a Higher Good, while authentic evil tends to pay attention to cost-benefits analyses. 

And I am acutely aware that I am making huge suppositions on the basis of exactly zero firsthand knowledge. But what's a blog for, if not for WAGs? Still, I could be dead wrong. Gates could be Darth Vader with a goofy smile or the most evil, manipulative, power-hungry bastard ever or a completely misunderstood guy. If you're ever in Seattle, take a look yourself.